Labyrinths

Short stories by a true master of the form. When Borges became blind, he was forced to compose his works in his head, turning them over and over until his constant attention wore them smooth like river stones. The result is an artificial but wholly beautiful style, in which no word is missing that should be there and no word is unnecessary.

If Borges has an idea that could become a novel, he instead writes a review of the novel it would have been. In ten pages he describes the essential features, and explores all the historical resonances of the book — it is immaterial that the book itself is never written. He is obsessed with the infinite, with labyrinths of words and of stone, with heretical philosophies and with strange corners of history and literature. You can read him for his ideas (or his re-presentation of the ideas of others, both real and fictitious) or purely to delight in the language he uses.